129. Words Are All We Have

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jlf2017

Four major writers, Han Yujoo from South Korea, Janice Pariat from India, Franco-Moroccan Leila Slimani and the peripatetic Nepali-Indian author Prajwal Parajuly, speak about ways of seeing and recording, and how they navigate words across countries and cultures. Yujoo is a writer, translator and author of three short story collections and the novel The Impossible… Read more »

ACCESS Health India Country Director Siddhartha Bhattacharya and William A. Haseltine, Chair and President of ACCESS Health International, discuss world class healthcare solutions developed in India. These innovations have the potential to be replicated to improve health services in many other parts of the world. Haseltine and Bhattacharya highlight how state and central governments in… Read more »

Political journalist Kota Neelima helped compile Tirumala, Sacred Food of Gods. In his introduction, A.V. Ramana Dikshitulu, the head priest of the Lord Venkateshwara Temple, explains the metaphysical nature of the ‘prasadam’, the ritual offerings, along with their ingredients, recipes and measures. Landscape designer, environmentalist and organic gardner Lathika George’s award-winning The Suriani Kitchen: Recipes… Read more »

A riveting conversation about journalism and cracking the impossible: North Korea and the Vatican. Novelist and investigative journalist Suki Kim, author of the award winning novel The Interpreter and New York Times bestselling literary nonfiction Without You There is No Us: Undercover Among the Sons of North Korea’s Elite alongside Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Michael Rezendes… Read more »

The celebrated columnist and novelist Shobhaa De’s most recent book, Shobhaa at Seventy and to Hell With It, is replete with her trademark candour, wit and insight. In conversation with editor, food critic and television icon Vir Sanghvi, she excavates the past and interrogates the present, from the swinging seventies to our own surprising times…. Read more »

Her palace shimmered with onyx and gold but was richer still in political and sexual intrigue. Cleopatra was a shrewd strategist and an ingenious negotiator. She was married twice, each time to a brother. She waged a brutal civil war against the first and poisoned the second; incest and assassination were family specialties. She had… Read more »

Two accomplished writers speak of their latest works of fiction and the context and inspirations of their books. Indo-Canadian writer and playwright Anosh Irani has published several critically acclaimed novels, including The Cripple and his Talisman, The Song of Kapunshu, Dahanu Road and, most recently, The Parcel. Writer and poet Janice Pariat, from the northeastern… Read more »

Gaurav Solanki and Satya Vyas both represent a pathbreaking new creativity in Hindi writing. Solanki writes short fiction and has brought a new idiom to his work, which has been targeted for its frankness and unconventionality. Vyas has written two highly regarded bestselling novels, Banares Talkies and Dilli Durbar. He has an enormous on-campus following… Read more »

Pankaj Sekhsaria has chronicled the fragile ecology of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, writing and recording consistently on the environment, wildlife conservation and the indigenous communities whose way of life is threatened in the name of development. In conversation with writer and environmentalist Amita Baviskar, he speaks of his passion for the islands, its vulnerable… Read more »

A session on the craft of writing across emotions, languages, countries and timelines. Cécile Rischmann is an Indian linguist and author who used her perception of Indian and French culture to write East-meets-West romantic comedy The French Encounter. Per J. Andersson is a writer and journalist whose book, The Amazing Story of the Man Who… Read more »

I’ve got the power. The power to change my world. To speak up. To stand out. Leap forward. And break out. Give me a football, give me a pen. I can take on a roomful of men. This book is a tribute to the courage and confidence of the Indian woman from Korba to Kashmir…. Read more »